UGC employees agitate over lack of rehabilitation policy

New Delhi: UGC employees are livid over
the absence of a clear-cut rehabilitation policy in the event
of creation of an overarching agency in higher education,
replacing the existing regulatory bodies.

The employees today resorted to agitation in the UGC
office here and raised slogans against its chairman Prof
Sukhadeo Thorat and the Human Resource Development Ministry
for not "highlighting their concerns about their
rehabilitation".

The ministry is proposing to set up a National
Commission for Higher Education and Research (NCHER) which
would subsume the existing bodies like UGC, AICTE and NCTE.

The draft NCHER Bill, prepared by a task force of the
ministry, is silent on how to rehabilitate the employees of
these organisations after the NCHER is set up.

The draft bill only says that the central government
will take consequential action in regard to officers and staff
in the regular service of UGC, AICTE and NCTE. There are about
600 employees in UGC, 150 in AICTE and about 100 in NCTE.

The agitated employees held an emergency meeting and
discussed the fate of the UGC staff after creation of NCHER.
"The staff and officers of UGC voiced concern at the
arbitrary manner in which the issue of employees in the
proposed commission has been addressed and the insensitive and
inhuman manner in which the ministry is hell bent upon ruining
the future of UGC employees, who have served the cause of
higher education for more than 50 years," claimed Dev Swarup,
president of Officers Association, UGC.